Wiktionary
n. (context BDSM English) The binding of the female breasts.
Wikipedia
Shinjū (心中, the characters for "mind" and "centre") means "double suicide" in Japanese, as in Shinjū Ten no Amijima (The Love Suicides at Amijima), written by the seventeenth-century tragedian Chikamatsu Monzaemon for the puppet theatre ( bunraku and/or joruri theatre). In common parlance shinjū is used to refer to any group suicide of persons bound by love, typically lovers, parents and children, and even whole families. In Japanese theatre and literary tradition, double suicides are the simultaneous suicides of two lovers whose ninjo, "personal feelings", or love for one another are at odds with giri, "social conventions" or familial obligations. Double suicides were rather common in Japan throughout history and double suicide is an important theme of the puppet theatre repertory. The tragic denouement is usually known to the audience and is preceded by a michiyuki, a small poetical journey, where lovers evoke the happier moments of their lives and their attempts at loving each other.
Lovers committing double suicide believed that they would be united again in heaven, a view supported by feudal teaching in Edo period Japan, which taught that the bond between husband and wife is continued into the next world, and by the teaching of Pure Land Buddhism wherein it is believed that through double suicide, one can approach rebirth in the Pure Land.http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/becker.htm
Carl B. Becker (1990) Buddhist Views of Suicide and Euthanasia, Philosophy East and West, V. 40 No. 4 (October 1990) pp. 543-555, University of Hawaii Press
The filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda adapted the puppet theatre play Shinjū ten no Amijima as a film in 1969, released under the title: Double Suicide in English, in a modernist adaptation, including a score by Toru Takemitsu.
In the preface he wrote for Donald Keene's book Bunraku, the writer Jun'ichirō Tanizaki complained about the too-long endings of all the double suicide plays, since it is a known denouement. In his novel Some Prefer Nettles, he parodies the notion of shinjū and gives it a social and sensual double suicide with no clear ending.
Shinju can mean the following things:
- Shinjū, Double suicide in Japanese theatre
- Shinju (BDSM), a form of breast bondage
- Shinjū (novel), a 1994 fiction book by Laura Joh Rowland
Shinjū (1994) is the title of the debut novel by American writer Laura Joh Rowland, a historical mystery set in 1689 Genroku-era Japan. The main character, a yoriki (a lower-ranking police officer) named Sano Ichirō, investigates a double murder disguised as a lovers' suicide, and in the process, uncovers a plot to assassinate Shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi.
Usage examples of "shinju".
He'd taken for granted that those who cared about such matters knew who he was and that he'd been assigned to handle the shinju, but he hadn't realized that they included Lady Niu.
The Nius and Magistrate Ogyu just wanted to avoid the scandal that would arise if Yukiko's part in the shinju became common knowledge.
He was cunning enough to plan the false shinju, and had access to plenty of loyal helpers.
She was telling him she knew that Sano had persisted in investigating the shinju, and even the identities of those he'd interrogated.
Without waiting for permission, he plunged into his story, beginning with his assignment to the shinju case.
In the process, they decimated the Shinju, driving what was left of them into the bleak, desolate highlands.
The Shinju were as tough as they were resourceful and they survived like the sure-footed mountain goats, whose thick winter coats they sheared, processed and wove into fantastic garments that were as light as air and as warm as a blazing fire.
As a young man Bnak had a penchant for anthropology and he spent two years in the highlands among the Shinju conducting his studies.
He discovered that in many ways his own people would never fathom, the Shinju possessed far more knowledge and wisdom.
Though it would have been far easier for Bnak to have stayed with Miira among the Shinju, he was no coward.
He chose to return to the capital and to work from within to change the laws regarding the Shinju, to help educate his people about Miira's people.
In short, they made pretense of listening to his impassioned treatises on the Shinju and then dismissed them as if they were the ravings of a lunatic.
Though she was by no means a vain woman, Miira used her Shinju mirror to make up her face each morning.
She no longer had the time nor the desire to make up her face, and yet, out of habit, she continued to look at her reflection in her Shinju mirror.
In the moment just before he was ambushed, she had been pulled out of sleep by a harsh shriek that, upon awakening, she knew existed only in her Shinju mind.